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Bloomberg:
- Wells Fargo & Co.(WFC), JPMorgan Chase & Co.(JPM) and the biggest U.S. banks were raised to “attractive” from “neutral” by Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which said share prices don’t reflect prospects for earnings growth. “We believe this difference in earnings power hasn’t been fully reflected in share prices,” New York-based analysts led by Richard Ramsden wrote in a note to clients today. “We estimate that normalized earnings for large banks are 39 percent higher than in 2007 despite the 36 percent decline in share prices.”
- A measure of U.S. job prospects rose in September for the first time in more than a year, a sign job losses may not keep accelerating, a private survey showed. The Conference Board’s Employment Trends Index rose 0.3 to 88.5, the first increase since January 2008 and the highest level since April, the New York-based private research group said today. The reading was down 16 percent from a year ago.
- U.S. home-loan bonds without government backing ended a third-quarter rally with a week of gains, leaving some securities at prices almost double their lows. Typical prices for the most-senior prime-jumbo securities rose 2 cents on the dollar last week to 84 cents, according to Barclays Capital data. Similar bonds backed by Alt-A loans with a few years of fixed rates increased 2 cents to 60 cents. The jumbo bonds are up from about 75 cents three months earlier, while the Alt-A bonds have climbed from 47 cents.
- U.S. service industries expanded in September for the first time in a year as the emerging recovery spread from housing and factories to the broader economy. The Institute for Supply Management’s index of non- manufacturing businesses, which make up almost 90 percent of the economy, rose to 50.9, higher than forecast, from 48.4 in August, according to the Tempe, Arizona-based group. Fifty is the dividing line between expansion and contraction. “We should continue to see broad improvement in the economy,” said Ellen Zentner, a senior economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. in New York. Even so, she said, “hurdles remain within the side of the economy that creates jobs. It’s going to be growth, but weak growth.” The ISM non-manufacturing gauge of new orders rose to the highest since October 2007, and the index of employment gained to 44.3, the highest since August 2008 and signaling job cuts were decelerating.
- Home prices in the Hamptons, the oceanside summer getaway for celebrities and Wall Street financiers, climbed 12 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier on an increase in high-end sales. The median price rose to $840,000 across the 15 villages and hamlets that make up the East End of Long Island, according to a report by the Corcoran Group, a New York-based property broker with offices in the Hamptons. The median for luxury homes, defined as the top 10 percent by price, jumped 23 percent to $5.9 million. “We usually see Wall Street bonus money stepping up to the plate in the second quarter,” said Rick Hoffman, a Bridgehampton-based senior vice president for Corcoran. “Some of it may have stepped up in the third quarter as people realized this is a buying opportunity.”
- Legislation aimed at tightening oversight of the $592 trillion derivatives market would give the Commodity Futures Trading Commission new authority to police over-the-counter commodity swaps as well as derivatives traded on foreign exchanges. The commission would get the power sought by Chairman Gary Gensler to regulate bilateral swaps in commodities such as wheat and natural gas, and may impose position limits on speculation that takes place outside of regulated exchanges, according to a 187-page draft measure released Oct. 2 by House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank.
- The cost to protect against defaults on U.S. corporate bonds fell for the second day as a report showed the nation’s service industries expanded last month for the first time in a year. Credit default swaps on the Markit CDX North America Investment- Grade Index Series 13, which is linked to 125 companies with investment-grade credit ratings and used to speculate on creditworthiness, fell 4.5 basis points to 102 basis points as of 11:57 a.m. in New York, according to broker Phoenix Partners Group. The Markit CDX index has declined 13 basis points after climbing to an almost one-month high of 115 basis points in intraday trading on Oct. 2, Phoenix prices show.
- Investors are snapping up commodities at the fastest pace in 18 months just as stockpiles of raw materials rise and shipping rates plunge, signaling that prices may be poised to fall. Open interest, or contracts yet to be closed, liquidated or delivered, rose 6.6 percent in the third quarter for the 20 most-traded U.S. commodities, exchange data compiled by Bloomberg show. That’s the steepest gain since the first three months of 2008, just before the credit-market freeze sent prices plunging from records. While the U.S. economy shows signs of bottoming after the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression, supplies of raw materials are growing faster than demand. Oil inventories rose 15 percent in the past year, Energy Department figures show. The Baltic Dry Index, a barometer for raw-material demand, slid 41 percent in the third quarter. “We’ve been moving out of our commodity holdings and into cash,” said Peter Sorrentino, who helps manage $13.8 billion at Huntington Asset Advisors in Cincinnati and correctly predicted last year’s price declines. “People got so excited about growth coming back, but now no one is quite sure what the traction of the recovery will be.” A “protracted global slowdown” may mean the 90 percent surge in copper prices and oil’s 57 percent gain in 2009 was a “short boom,” the International Monetary Fund said on Oct. 1. Philip Verleger, the University of Calgary economist who correctly forecast in 2007 that oil would reach $100 a barrel, now says crude will fall below $40 by year-end. Copper may average 22 percent less this quarter than last, according to a Bloomberg survey of analysts, after monthly shipments of refined copper into China, the world’s biggest user, tumbled 25 percent in August. Investors poured $10.2 billion into commodity funds this year, a six-fold increase from a year earlier, according to researcher EPFR Global in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Investors turned the most bearish on the dollar in 18 months in September as signs of a worldwide economic recovery reduced demand for the currency as a refuge, according to 583 respondents in the Bloomberg Professional Global Confidence Index. Forward rates indicate the dollar will be little changed in six months. Warehouses monitored by the London Metal Exchange held 34 percent more copper on Oct. 2 than on July 14, when supplies reached a 2009 low. Inventories rose to 346,050 tons on Oct. 1, the highest since May 20. Stockpiles measured by the Shanghai Futures Exchange reached a five-year high last month. In its semi-annual World Economic Outlook, the IMF said commodities gains similar to those of late 2007 and the first half of 2008 may be delayed for years.
- French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde said Europe’s economic recovery doesn’t justify further gains in the euro, underlining the Group of Seven’s call for China to shoulder more of the burden of the dollar’s slide. “The European economy is not doing badly but it’s not doing so well that its currency can be the ultimate recourse,” Lagarde said today in an interview in Istanbul, where the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are taking place. “We need a rebalancing so that one currency doesn’t take the flak for the others.”
Wall Street Journal:
- Data-storage and networking company Brocade Communications Systems Inc.(BRCD) has quietly put itself up for sale, people familiar with the matter said. Hewlett-Packard Co.(HPQ) is among those kicking the tires, these people said. Other companies including Oracle Corp.(ORCL) may also be examining a purchase, said one of the people familiar with the matter.
- The European Commission will propose raising a minimum tax on energy products such as gasoline based on their carbon-dioxide emissions, as part of a broader plan to reform energy taxation in the 27-nation bloc, a draft document obtained by Dow Jones Newswires showed Monday.
- News Corp. (NWS/A) Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch said Monday that traditional newspaper and television advertising markets are picking up, echoing growing sentiment that the media industry may rebound from steep losses.
CNBC:
- Obama Advisors Mull Tax Cuts, Other Job-Creation Measures.
NY Times:
- China plans to spend billions of dollars in the next few years to develop media and entertainment companies that it hopes can compete with global giants like the News Corporation(NWS/A) and Time Warner(TWX), and will in the process loosen some of its tight control of these industries. An ambitious plan, set forth in guidelines last week by China’s State Council, envisions the creation of entertainment, news and culture companies with a market orientation and with less government backing. China, in short, would like to consolidate its industry into companies resembling Bloomberg, Time Warner and Viacom, analysts say. “There appears to be a feeling at the highest levels of government that they need a media machine commensurate to the rising status and power of China,” says Jim Laurie, a former ABC News correspondent who teaches at Hong Kong University and recently met with Chinese state broadcasting executives. Beijing hopes the moves will even improve the nation’s image overseas — part of a longstanding effort to use “soft power,” rather than military might to win friends abroad. Along the way, Beijing will allow private and foreign companies to invest in everything from music, film and television to theater, dance and opera productions — though largely through state-owned companies.
- The Managed Funds Association, the hedge fund industry’s main lobbying group, has selected Darcy Bradbury, a former assistant Treasury secretary and a senior vice president for the D.E. Shaw group, to serve as its chairwoman. The move comes as hedge funds are stepping up their efforts to head off new regulation from Washington.
Washington Post:
- The nation's governors are emerging as a formidable lobbying force as health-care reform moves through Congress and states overburdened by the recession brace for the daunting prospect of providing coverage to millions of low-income residents. The legislation the Senate Finance Committee is expected to approve this week calls for the biggest expansion of Medicaid since its creation in 1965. Under the Senate bill and a similar House proposal, a patchwork state-federal insurance program targeted mainly at children, pregnant women and disabled people would effectively become a Medicare for the poor, a health-care safety net for all people with an annual income below $14,404. Whether Medicaid can absorb a huge influx of beneficiaries is a matter of grave concern to many governors, who have cut low-income health benefits -- along with school funding, prison construction, state jobs and just about everything else -- to cope with the most severe economic downturn in decades. "I can't think of a worse time for this bill to be coming," said Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen (D), a member of the National Governors Association's health-care task force. "I'd love to see it happen. But nobody's going to put their state into bankruptcy or their education system in the tank for it."
The Hill:
- Venture capitalists breathed a collective sigh of relief Thursday when a proposal from the House Financial Services Capital Markets Subcommittee did not seek to treat them like private equity firms or hedge funds. Venture capital investors had been lobbying against such a measure, saying that being required to register with the Securitiesand Exchange Commission like hedge funds and other private pools of money was unnecessary and expensive.
The Business Insider:
- The GM of Microsoft's (MSFT) in-game advertising unit Massive says business is booming. In a post to the company blog, JJ Richards writes that the ads-in-videogames market should reach $1 billion by 2014 and that Massive has already surpassed its quarterly sales targets.
LA Times:
- About 1 in 100 of America's 8-year-olds have been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers, who will be releasing details of their study later this year. That's a 50% increase from two years ago, when the government estimated the rate at 1 in 150. Dr. Ileana Arias, deputy director of the CDC, said the agency considers the disorder "a significant issue that needs immediate attention." But the higher rate might not mean more kids have autism spectrum disorder, scientists cautioned. "It is not clear more children are affected rather than just changes in our ability to detect," said Dr. Tom Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health.
USAToday:
- The president of Somalia on Sunday denounced the recruiting of young men from Minnesota's huge Somali community for terrorist activity in his war-ravaged homeland, and said he plans to work with the U.S. government to bring those still alive back home. President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed spoke with The Associated Press while visiting the Minneapolis area, where authorities believe as many as 20 young Somali men — possibly recruited by a vision of jihad to fight — returned to the impoverished nation over the last two years. At least three have died in Somalia, including one who authorities believe was the first American suicide bomber. Three others have pleaded guilty in the U.S. to terror-related charges.
- Moviegoers in about a dozen cities including San Francisco, Tucson, Las Vegas and Albuquerque will soon have an alternative to Imax (IMAX) when they want to see supersized flicks. Cinemark (CNK), the third-largest theater chain, has caught the attention of the movie industry — and investors — with a plan for its own big-screen system, called Cinemark XD, in time for the Christmas movie season.
Reuters:
- U.S. President Barack Obama has no plans now for a second economic stimulus package, spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Monday. "No, I think we've said all along that there were no plans for that," Gibbs said at a daily news briefing.
Financial Times:
- Asian central banks and regulators are moving to curb rising property prices, in a sign they have adopted a more aggressive stance on pre-empting asset bubbles. Singapore and South Korea in the past month have tightened rules governing loans to the property sector and Indian media report that the country may soon follow suit. China and Hong Kong have also warned banks to avoid imprudent lending to homebuyers. “This is a positive, albeit tentative, sign that Asia has learnt from the experience of the west,” said Rob Subbaraman, chief Asia economist at Nomura. “It is prudent to lean against the formation of asset price bubbles.”
Telegraph:
- According to sources close to the administration, Gen McChrystal shocked and angered presidential advisers with the bluntness of a speech given in London last week. The next day he was summoned to an awkward 25-minute face-to-face meeting on board Air Force One on the tarmac in Copenhagen, where the president had arrived to tout Chicago's unsuccessful Olympic bid.
DigiTimes:
- Demand for LED chips is set to outpace supply growth in 2010 due to the increasing penetration rates of LED TVs and LED notebooks, according to industry sources in Taiwan. Demand for LED chips from the LED TV segment is likely to top 1.2 billion units a month based on a projection of global shipments of 15 million LED TVs, or 10% of the global shipments of flat-panel TVs in 2009, the sources estimated. Some branded TV vendors have even predicted that global shipments of LED TVs in 2009 may reach as high as 30 million units, further pushing up demand for LED chips, the sources added. Meanwhile, the penetration rate of LED notebooks in the entire notebook segment is also expected to climb to 80% in 2010, from 50% in 2009, said the sources. The shortage of LED chips is unlikely to wane until 2012.
Style Underperformer:
Large-Cap Growth (+.49%)
Sector Underperformers:
Education (-.43%), Software (-.27%) and Medical Equipment (+.11%)
Stocks Falling on Unusual Volume:
SGEN, MLHR and AMAG
Stocks With Unusual Put Option Activity:
1) NXY 2) AMX 3) ACH 4) CBS 5) CLX